


my heart is gold (and my hands are cold)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Depending on one’s perspective, Jemma’s sixteenth escape attempt goes either very, very well or very, very poorly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my heart is gold (and my hands are cold)

**Author's Note:**

> I am not caught up on comments but I'm going to try and reply to them tonight, so definitely y'all should just pretend I am.
> 
> Title is from Halsey's _Gasoline_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

Depending on one’s perspective, Jemma’s sixteenth escape attempt goes either very, very well or very, very poorly.

It goes well in that it’s actually quite successful. She makes it out—not only of the suite of rooms that have been her prison for months, but of the base itself. Past all of the guards and the security and the confusing tangle of corridors meant to disorient intruders, she makes it out of the base and through the perimeter fence.

It goes poorly in that she _makes it out_ , and it turns out the reason for the power outage which makes her escape possible is a severe snowstorm.

She hesitates briefly at the fence, torn. Her clothes are warm and sturdy—jeans, boots, a thick jumper layered over a long-sleeved shirt—but they’re hardly cold-weather gear. She has no coat, no hat, and no gloves. Chances are, she’ll develop frostbite and/or die of hypothermia long before she finds her way to civilization.

But it’s better to be dead than to live any longer as a prisoner, she thinks, and so she carries on into the snow.

By the time she regrets her decision, she’s long since lost her way. Even if she wanted to go back, she couldn’t.

\---

“Over here!”

She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she left the base.

“Fuck. Is she dead?”

She knows that she should keep moving.

“…No, she’s breathing.”

She knows, distantly, that lying down in the snow is a very foolish thing to do.

“Oh, thank fuck. You got her?”

But she’s tired. She’s so, so tired. Exhaustion has sunk into her very bones, along with the cold, and she simply can’t take another step. Just a few minutes of rest, she thinks, just a quick lie-down, and she’ll be able to continue.

“Yeah, I got her.”

She’s lifted out of the snow by unfamiliar arms. She wants to struggle against them—tries to—but she can’t make her arms move the way she wants them to. She opens her mouth to demand to be put down, but her tongue is clumsy and confused.

“Shit, she’s in bad shape. You got the—?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Here.”

There’s something on her neck—heat—and then a sharp pinch that grows into a scorching pain. It spreads from her neck and throughout her body, burning-burning-burning, and she cries out.

“Calm down, you’re gonna be fine. It’s your own drug, you should know how it works.”

“She’s hypothermic and confused, dumbass, she doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“Whatever.” She’s set down on something hard—not lovely soft, like the snow, but at least not cold. Except the burning is growing worse, hot-hot-hot, and she wishes for the cold back. “How long does that shit take to work, anyway? We’re dead if we bring her back like this.”

“Pretty sure we’re dead either way, man. But at least if she’s in reasonably good shape, they’ll probably make it quick.”

“Fuck.”

Her whole body is on _fire_ , acid running through her veins and burning away the blood, and she _screams_ —

“Shit shit _shit_ , hold her down—”

“Is it supposed to do this?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be any less tortured if she cracks her head open falling off the bench!”

She wants to move, to escape the burning, but she can’t, she can’t move, weight presses down on her, holding her still, and it’s _agony_. She stops trying to escape. The weight lessens.

Agony abates.

“She’s soaked through. Which d’you think’ll get us worse punishment: bringing her back in freezing wet clothes or naked?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Naked, no question.”

The burning is subsiding, letting cold rush back in. Other feelings come with it—her fingers (she has fingers! She’d forgotten!) and toes (toes!) tingle wildly, her feet ache, her head throbs.

Jemma is freezing and in pain and still so tired, exhaustion weighing her down like an awful boulder on her chest, but she can think clearly for the first time in…well, in quite a while.

She opens her eyes with some difficulty and finds herself staring at the ceiling of a Quinjet. She’s laid out across the seats on one side. Something is resting against her left hand; she lifts clumsy fingers and, when she manages to lay them over the object in question, recognizes the shape of a syringe.

She connects her freezing state to her exhaustion and realizes that she must have developed hypothermia, as she feared. She doesn’t need to lift the syringe to know what label it will bear—it’s a quick, chemical cure for hypothermia she developed some years ago. It must be; it’s the only explanation for her improved state. (She never did manage to alleviate the side effects; she regrets that now.)

The question is, who gave it to her? Friend or foe?

She turns her head to look at the seats on the other side and finds three men standing in the center of the compartment. They’re bent over a tablet, faces lit with blue light, and their cold-weather gear bears a distinctive logo.

HYDRA.

They found her.

The realization saps her remaining energy. She closes her eyes and lets exhaustion carry her into the blissful embrace of unconsciousness.

\---

“Sir! She’s—she’s alive, sir, and she’s fine.”

“We treated her hypothermia on-scene. She could do with some warming up, still, but she’s fine.”

Voices wake her, but it’s not until she feels a familiar touch to her face that she opens her eyes to stare up at the man she was running to when she ventured into the snow.

“There you are.” Grant’s face is dark with displeasure, but his voice is soft as he sweeps her up into his arms. “You’re all right, baby. I’ve got you.”

Though his grip is uncomfortably tight, she makes no attempt to escape him; quite the opposite, she snuggles as close to him as she can, greedy for the heat of his skin.

“C-cold,” is all she manages to stutter out.

“I know,” he says. He’s moving, carrying her down the ramp of the Quinjet and into the hangar. “I’ll get you warmed up, don’t worry.”

He jerks his head at someone as he walks, and she hears shouts behind them. The men on the Quinjet, she thinks, being taken into custody. She’s too exhausted—too cold—to protest, to request mercy on their behalves (or even ask why it’s necessary), but it’s probably just as well. His face says clearly that he’s in no mood for leniency.

His grip on her is sure, but she’s feeling light-headed and unsteady and (somewhat irrationally) fears tumbling out of his arms to hit the floor, so—with effort—she wraps her arms around his neck. Grant’s face remains dark, no trace of the smile that she usually produces by initiating contact.

“It was stupid to go out into that storm, Jemma,” he says lowly.

“I saw an opening,” she says. Though the base is warm, it’s not warm _enough_ , and the heat that seeps into her from Grant is lessened by her clothes (cold and damp) and his (unfortunately thick); she’s shivering. “I took it.”

It’s something he would say—something he _has_ said—but it doesn’t amuse him.

“We’re gonna talk about this,” he warns, and there’s enough leashed fury in his voice to make her flinch.

“Yes,” she says, resigned. “I thought we might.”

He enters a lift, and someone must enter with them, because though he makes no move to press a button, the doors close and the lift begins to rise.

She wonders who’s with them—not many would dare to stay so near when Grant is wearing this expression, and she’s missed all of those who would—but she can’t look to see. She hasn’t the energy for it. All she can do is rest her head on his shoulder and close her eyes.

She doesn’t sleep, exactly, but she loses herself a little—in the rhythm of his stride, the familiar scent of his aftershave, the steady beat of his heart—and only the sudden change of position as he sets her down brings her back to awareness.

She curls her fingers in the blanket beneath her for balance as he kneels next to the bed to remove her shoes. The laces, soaked through, frozen, and then melted as they were, have tightened horribly, and he doesn’t bother with attempting to unknot them; instead, he draws a knife from his boot and slices right through them.

“I liked those laces,” she says, inanely. “They have stars on them.”

His mouth tightens, but he says nothing, removing her shoes and then her socks without a word. He tosses them aside and stands, then pulls her to her feet.

“Did they hurt you?” he asks, finally, as he tugs her jumper and shirt over her head.

The act of raising her arms to let him leaves her unbalanced, even though she’s standing still, and she stumbles into his chest. Free of two layers, it’s easier to feel his warmth, and she latches on to him at once.

For a moment, his hand—strong and gloriously warm—presses between her shoulder blades, and she sighs happily. Then he unclips her bra and gently pushes her away.

“Answer the question,” he orders, letting her bra fall to the floor.

She’s naked from the waist up and freezing cold; she doesn’t want to _talk_ , she wants to wrap herself up in him and at least seven blankets and not move for a week. But he’s clearly in no mood to be argued with, so she shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “They thought I was brainwashed.”

Her stomach knots with guilt as she remembers it—remembers the ongoing debate among her old team over how best to reverse the programming they were so certain must be present. Three months she was in their custody, and she could never convince them that she acted of her own free will.

They have so much faith in her—so much _trust_ —and she’s not worthy of it at all.

Grant cares nothing for her remorse, however.

“Good,” he says darkly, and unbuttons her jeans for her.

She could do it herself, certainly—she’s nowhere near one hundred percent, but she’s not _that_ badly off—but she doesn’t protest. The awful hollow in her stomach, what started as a pit but widened into a gaping chasm over the course of three months without him, shrinks a little with every brush of his skin against hers.

She fancies it will be months, if not _years_ , before it’s gone entirely, but every little bit of skin contact helps. She’s very much looking forward to curling up in bed with him.

In aid of reaching that goal, she hurries to step out of her jeans and knickers. Grant’s hands burn through her as he steadies her, and it’s the warmth of him, more than her wavering feet, that leads her to slump against him this time. Now that she’s fully nude, she’s gone beyond _freezing_ and into—into something worse, which she’s certain she’ll be able to name after a few days of sleep and some intensive cuddling with the man she loves.

“I missed you,” she says, voice muffled by his shirt.

His arms close around her, and she knows a dizzying moment of disappointment (because _he’s_ not naked, why is he not naked? She would much rather bare skin against hers than fabric) mixed with love and longing and relief as he kisses her hair.

“I missed you, too.” His voice is rough, but the hand that cups the back of her head is almost unbearably gentle. “Now, let’s get you into bed.”

It’s clear from his tone that he means _to sleep_ , and while she’s certainly in need of that, her body—if not her very soul—is aching for something more. She’s had three months without him, three months alone, and she’s not inclined to wait any longer for reunion sex.

“Only if you come with me,” she says, and lets her tone make the innuendo for her.

Grant laughs lowly, and the sound of it—the feel of it, how it reverberates inside her chest—makes her shiver in a way that has nothing to do with cold.

“Baby,” he says, “You can barely stand.”

“And what has that to do with anything?” she asks. “Have you become suddenly incapable of holding me up?”

He leans back to meet her gaze, and she pouts up at him. There’s affection and amusement in the curve of his smile, but it’s the heat in his eyes that gives her hope. He’s tempted—of course he’s tempted. He’s just being…oddly chivalrous for once.

“No,” he says. “But I think we’d be better off saving sex for when you’re not about to faint.”

“I am not about to faint,” she argues. “I’m merely unsteady.”

He sighs. “Let’s see you walk to the bathroom, then.”

Jemma’s more than unsteady, really, but she manages to keep her feet as he steps back, denying her his support.

“And walking to the bathroom will prove that I’m fit for sex?” she asks. Without the warmth of his body, the cold is harder to ignore; she hugs herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

“Making it all the way there without collapsing might,” he says.

“Fine,” she says, and turns carefully to face the en suite—which is, sadly, on the opposite side of the bed. It seems much farther than it used to be. “Watch me, then.”

It’s certainly not the most _graceful_ journey she’s ever made from the bedroom to the en suite, and she has to stop once (or twice) to lean against the wall, but she does make it without falling.

Before she can declare her victory, however, she’s distracted by what’s _inside_ the bathroom. Her things are still arrayed on her sink, exactly as she last placed them, and the sight of the preserved environment brings tears to her eyes. As does the presence of the sticky note she left on Grant’s mirror the morning she left— _months_ ago—still in the same position, but now secured with tape.

She pauses in the doorway, struggling with emotion, and Grant’s hands grip her hips. She leans back into him gratefully.

“Every day,” he murmurs, fingers flexing against her skin. “I looked at that _fucking_ note, and I—” He stops, hisses in a breath. “They’re gonna pay for this. I took it easy on them before, for your sake, but I ran out of mercy three months ago.” There’s so much venom in his voice that she nearly flinches when he presses a soft, warm kiss to her temple. “I’m gonna kill them all.”

There’s an argument to be made here—that the team, if not the rest of SHIELD, did what they did out of love for her, and surely he can appreciate _that_ as a motive—but she hasn’t the energy for it, nor the motivation. For all that she’s slightly warmer now that she’s in his arms once more, she’s still _freezing_ , and she's certain the chill won’t leave her until she’s skin to skin with Grant.

Defusing his temper will have to wait.

“But not today,” she says, turning to face him.

His furious expression softens as he looks down at her. “No. Not today.”

“I walked to the bathroom,” she points out—both to lighten the mood and because she still very much wants sex. “See?”

“You nearly fell three times.”

“But I didn’t,” she says, sliding her hands up his chest, “And once we’re in bed, there will be no danger of falling at all.”

Even as he hesitates, his fingers dig into her hips at her tone. He clearly wants her just as badly as she wants him; it’s only his concern for her holding him back. Which she does appreciate, of course—just not as much as she’d appreciate having him _inside_ of her already.

It’s up to her to force the issue, then.

She rocks up onto her toes to kiss him, keeping herself steady with the aid of his shoulders. For a heartbeat he remains still…and then his control snaps. With a sharp bite to her bottom lip, he takes control of the kiss and turns it into something heated even as he lifts her off of her feet.

Her head spins as he turns them toward the bed—though that might have more to do with his grip on her thighs and the demand in his kiss than her lightheadedness.

Perhaps his control is more _dented_ than broken, however, as he takes rather more care with her than usual. Rather than simply dropping her on the bed, he lowers her to it, somehow managing to gently place her on the mattress even as he’s climbing onto it himself. She’s not terribly concerned with the mechanics of it—can’t be, not when he follows the motion with stripping out of his shirt.

She’s dreamt of this, of course—alone in the suite of rooms that served as her cell at SHIELD, she spent countless hours imagining their reunion. Grant shows his love in displays of possessiveness; there’s no one else in the world he cares enough about to claim, and she’s learnt to treasure it, to revel in the bruises and bites he leaves after every scare and close call. She even, guiltily, has been pleased by his displays of jealousy regarding other men.

She’s accustomed to it—has come to crave it, even, and she craved it very much indeed whilst imprisoned by SHIELD.

She pictured being pinned to the wall of the lift, being fucked fast and hard before they even made it to their quarters. She pictured being held down, made to beg—made to apologize for letting herself get captured—before he would let her come. As the weeks became months, she even pictured teasing him, making leading comments about the attractiveness of her SHIELD guards or her instinct to seek company in his absence, solely so she could enjoy the fruits of his jealous rage.

But she never pictured _this_.

The sex starts tender and sweet—and achingly, achingly slow. He touches her all over, kisses and strokes every inch of her skin, murmuring endearments in what _must_ be every language he knows, by the sheer count of them. Desire creeps over her like a fog, stealing her breath away and melting the ice from her bones.

She’s burning up long before he finally, _finally_ slides into her.

Once he does—once he’s comfortably nestled between her thighs, above and around and inside of her—he pauses, staring down at her with an expression that makes her throat tight.

“What?” she asks, releasing her hold on his shoulders to cup his face instead. “Grant, what is it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she echoes, confused. “Whatever for?”

He rocks into her a little—just barely enough friction to make her whimper—and then takes her hands in his, lacing their fingers even as he presses them into the pillow on either side of her head.

“Not finding you,” he says, with another shallow thrust. She wants to squirm, wants to buck up into him and increase the pace, but his weight keeps her pinned. “That base wouldn’t have lasted ten _minutes_ if I’d known you were in it.”

There’s something hiding behind the darkness in his voice, but she can’t quite pick it out. It’s hard to think straight, to absorb what he’s saying, when nearly all of her attention is focused on the desperate desire winding higher with every shift of his hips.

But she forces herself to focus, and when his words align into a sentence in her mind, she frowns.

“I know that,” she says. “Of course I know that, it’s nothing to apol—”

For a moment, he speeds things up, and the quick, sharp thrusts chase all of the thoughts right out of her mind—enough so that when he stops again, she can barely remember what they were talking about, let alone what she was saying.

And even if she _could_ remember, it couldn’t possibly matter as much as the fact that he’s _stopped_.

“Grant,” she whines. He smiles.

“I’ll give you what you want, baby,” he promises, and kisses her, slow and absolutely wicked. 

He finds a new pace, somewhere in between, and she feels every single one of his slow, deep thrusts all the way up her spine. All thoughts of cold have been left behind; she’s so hot, blazing inside and out, that it’s impossible to believe she was in danger of freezing to death mere hours ago.

His lips find her pulse, but he doesn’t bite down—doesn’t suck bruises into her skin the way he usually does. Instead, he _talks_ , voice rough and uneven and utterly baffling.

“They hid you from me,” he says, “I looked _everywhere_. I ripped answers out of _dozens_ of agents; no one knew where you were.” He shakes his head, and the scrape of his stubble ripples through her all the way to her core. “I would’ve killed a million men, but they hid you. I’m _sorry_.”

Between the way he presses the words into her skin and the pounding of her heart in her ears as he drives her mad, she can barely hear him. She certainly can’t make sense of what he’s saying.

“I don’t—ah!” Her barely begun sentence ends in a cry as he finally _does_ bite down, sending a whole new trail of fire along her nerves that’s only intensified when he uses his tongue to soothe the hurt. At the same time, he picks up the pace—not by much, but enough so that all thoughts of conversation are driven from her mind.

One of his hands releases hers and finds its way to her clit, and just like that, she tumbles over the edge, not so much screaming his name as _chanting_ it, a steady litany of the only thing in her head: Grant, Grant, Grant.

She loses track of herself in it, in the prickling of her nerves and the white-hot shivers and the sound he makes when he comes—in the sheer _relief_ of finally being home with him—and the whole world narrows down into this moment.

She’s exactly where she belongs.


End file.
